It's "Hacker News", not "Consumer News". Lots of people come here looking for interesting projects to contribute to, modify, incorporate into hobby projects, or even use for commercial purposes. Some of those uses may be disallowed by copyright and licensing issues. It seems like an obvious question that needs to be asked before getting excited and wasting hours writing code that can't be used.
Just from my own experience, I have gotten burned a couple of times, where a five minute check on copyright/licensing would have saved hours of wasted effort.
Just from my own experience, I have gotten burned a couple of times, where a five minute check on copyright/licensing would have saved hours of wasted effort.